Shiver Leviathan

Databank Text

“Most of the biosphere is void. A wet desert five thousand meters deep. Life at the surface has its time in the sun and then it dies. The dead snow down to the bottom to feed strange life.

“But in that void is also form. Empty space actual, soaring black and silent. Silent in an ocean full of voices. The unsound after the bitten end of a scream.

“They are complete. A compact with teeth: one shiver, many sharks. Males ride their mother until they leave to ride the wife. The riders reap the small prey. Mother-wife takes the main. It needs a cold, cruel will to make hunger patient. But in the desert of the water they are always hungry and always patient.

“On Earth there was a place called Point Nemo, the furthest from all land. There was nothing in it. So they dropped dead satellites there.

“Perhaps, at Proteus’ Nemo, the ocean learned to eat what it was given. Perhaps there is a hunger in them for prey from the stars.”

—NoA Node GCI-ZZ-AHI1, “Sonar Dream”